aeternae caritatis | everlasting charity

Giclée print on Arches Cold Press
34" x 34"
2010

Our immortal souls travel through an earthly life journey thoughtlessly trampling past precious visions of our Creator's designs of perfection. Day after day our senses become dulled by repetition instead of them being heightened by sensing a deeper meanings in each encounter.

Our eyes may glimpse but it is our soul which sees that which is given in prayerful introspection and infused by graces of insight. These graces prompt reflections which dynamically thrust a soul forward as it searches in tireless hunger and thirst to know God and experience Him. These graces lead a soul in stillness to contemplate His beauty through prayer.

Photographic works capture a physical image but I encourage the viewer to look beyond the corporeality of what they see and internally meditate upon the beauty of the subject. With grace, this time spent in prayer may help to transform a soul and thrust it forward on its journey to seek the eternal beauty and presence of God.

Employing long standing conceptions of symbolism and iconography I hope to engage the viewer to reflect upon that which can known only through the eyes of a prayerful soul.

This particular image, Aeternae Caritatis, is a visual interpretation of Christ's ultimate sacrifice of love as He poured it out upon humanity by His redemptive act of suffering upon the cross. Through everlasting charitable love Christ transformed the stigma of the shameful cross into a symbol of beauty which we in thanksgiving now venerate.

Connected with water the dragonfly traditionally represents a messenger but its natural cruciform shape also symbolizes the most common symbol of Christ's passion - the holy cross. The cruciform is circumscribed by thorns and is supported by a nautilus shell and white rose - maternal symbols of the Virgin Mary who in station keeping stood sorrowfully at Jesus side during His final hours.

Photojournalist Lisa A. Johnston exercises her creativity by exploring spiritual concepts through photographic montage imagery.

Lisa has run aeternus photography gallery on the Internet since 1996, when there were only a handful of sites showing photographs on the World Wide Web. Her images are contained upon film, a collection which extends from black and white 35mm to medium and large format pinhole works. These days images are collected digitally and include a modified flatbed scanner as a camera.

Imagery from the artist has been reproduced in books, magazines and traveled in international exhibits. Lisa holds a Bachelors of Science in Photojournalism from Syracuse University and resides in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband and two children. They are parishioners of the Cathedral Basilica.

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